An intermittent fault may appear and disappear within a data processing system without taking any actions such as repairs or changes to the system configuration. The fault may be detected from the intermittency of its sensing signals. This detection can be converted to a diagnostic monitor, with a “0” indicating no faults detected (exonerating) and a “1” indicating a fault detected (indicating). However, known systems are not effective in distinguishing temporary abnormal sensor values generated by a noisy monitor or transient environmental conditions from intermittent faults which may become permanent faults, resulting in, for example, incorrect information or a connector problem. It would be advantageous to distinguish between these temporary abnormal sensor values from intermittent faults that may lead to a permanent fault.
Real-time detection and diagnostics of intermittent faults has been a challenge for diagnostics of systems. One aspect is related to the intermittent nature of the fault itself. The two main challenges associated with the intermittent nature are 1) the unpredictable frequency that the fault occurs, which makes the detection difficult, and 2) the causes of the fault, which depend not only the potential fault of the system under study, but also the unpredictable transient environmental conditions. The other aspect is related to the sensors/monitors used to detect the faults. It is quite possible that the system under detection has no faults, but the sensors/monitors themselves are noisy due to their own faults.
What makes the real-time detection and diagnostics difficult is the sampling of the events. The unpredictable nature of the faults makes it difficult to determine how long an event should be monitored before it may be concluded whether the detected fault is a true fault of the system, the monitor is noisy, or a situation exists that needs further monitoring.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and system for differentiating spurious faults, which for example may be caused by a noisy monitor or transient environmental conditions producing temporary abnormal sensor values, from intermittent system faults. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.